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Research Resources Home
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Showing all 123 Primary Sources resources
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Open Access/Free Resource
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers (Gale)
A collection of English news media in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides from the United Kingdom collected by Reverend Charles Burney.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
19th Century British Library Newspapers (Gale)
Search the contents of 49 local and national newspapers from nineteenth century Britain. Includes titles such as the
Freeman's Journal
,
Lloyd's Illustrated Newspaper
, and the
Pall Mall Gazette.
[more info]
Internet
19th Century UK Periodicals (Gale)
Full text journals, magazines, and specialty newspapers that portray British life in the Victorian Age. Subscription includes
Series 1: New Readerships
and
Series 2: Empire.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
19th Century US Newspapers (Gale)
Collection of over 500 US newspapers from the 19th Century. Includes approximately 1.7 million pages of primary source newspaper content from both rural and urban titles. Illustrated papers also included.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
A Guide to Finding Primary Sources at JMU
See JMU Librarians' top recommendations for finding
primary sources
.
[more info]
ABZU: A Guide to Information Related to the Study of the Ancient Near East on the Web
Abzu guides the user to data on the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean world...
[more info]
Access World News (NewsBank)
Provides full-text for over 600 U.S. and over 700 international news sources.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
African Writers Series (Chadwyck-Healey)
Key texts of modern African literature.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
African-American Poetry, 1760-1900 (Chadwyck-Healey)
Includes the full text of almost 3,000 poems written between 1760 and 1900...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Alexander Street Literature (Alexander Street Press)
A cross-searchable package of collections covering literatures of place, race, and gender...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
America's Historical Newspapers: 1690-1922 (Readex)
Cover-to-cover digital facsimiles of 1,000 historic newspapers from every state.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1: 1760-1900 (Readex)
Fully searchable facsimile editions of nearly 30,000 broadsides and ephemera printed in colonial...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street Press)
Primary source database of more than 400 sources of diaries, letters and memoirs...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Film Scripts Online (Alexander Street Press)
Full text database of over 1,000 film scripts digitized and thoroughly indexed...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Founding Era Collection: Rotunda (University of Virginia)
Cross-search primary and secondary papers of major figures of the early republic, including James Madison, Dolley Madison and George Washington.
[more info]
American Memory (Library of Congress)
Digitized collections of primary source materials at the Library of Congress on American history and culture...
[more info]
Internet
American National Biography (Oxford University Press)
A biographical resource for notable people in American history with a database offering portraits...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Periodical Series (ProQuest)
Digitized page images from American magazines and journals of all types. Titles range from some of the first...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Poetry (Chadwyck-Healey)
Includes 40,356 poems by 209 poets, along with six landmark anthologies of American poetry...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American Rhetoric Speech Bank (American Rhetoric)
Index and full text of over 5000 audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches...
[more info]
Internet
American Song (Alexander Street Press)
Interface change coming soon!
Click here
for more information.
American Song is a history database with music from America's past.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
American State Papers, 1789-1838 (Readex)
Legislative and executive documents of the United States government...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
AP Images (Accuweather/AP)
Image database containing the Associated Press' current year's photo report and a selection of images dating from the 1500s. Also includes charts, graphs, tables, and maps.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Archive of Americana (Readex)
A cluster of collections reflecting the history of the United States through its congressional publications...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
ArchiveGrid (OCLC / Firstsearch)
Search through historical documents, personal papers, and family histories...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
ARTFL: American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language
Provides the complete text of nearly 2,000 French works including classic works of French literature, non-fiction prose, and technical writing.
[more info]
ARTstor
Image database containing over 1 million images in subject areas such as art, architecture, music, religion, anthropology, world history, literature and more.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Asian American Drama (Alexander Street Press)
Collection of Asian American plays with biographical, production and theatrical information.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Black Drama (Alexander Street Press)
Full text of plays from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 100 playwrights...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Black Short Fiction (Alexander Street Press)
A full-text collection of short stories from Africa and the African Diaspora.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Black Thought and Culture (Alexander Street Press)
Collection of non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Black Women Writers (Alexander Street Press)
Fiction, nonfiction and poetry by women from North America, Africa and the Caribbean
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Bloomberg BNA Tax and Accounting Centers
A comprehensive source for federal tax code, IRS publications, tax rules, tax forms, practice portfolios, and related news and commentary.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street Press)
Primary source database offering women's diaries and letters...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
British Newspaper Archive
The
British Newspaper Archive
contains millions of digitized newspapers owned by the British Library. While searching is free, there is a fee to download full text articles.
JMU Libraries are not responsible for paying these fees.
[more info]
Internet
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index (Chadwyck-Healey)
Not recommended for use in Google Chrome. Please use Internet Explorer, FireFox, or Safari.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index is an all-inclusive bibliographic tool for 19th-century research.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
CAMIO (Catalog of Art Museum Images Online) (OCLC / Firstsearch)
This digital image database offers rights-cleared, high-quality art images for class projects, art history and studio art programs, course Web sites, lectures, presentations, and research resources...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Caribbean Literature (Alexander Street Press)
A collection of poetry and fiction produced in the Caribbean region during the 19th and 20th centuries.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Chicago Manual of Style
Get help citing sources, determining proper grammar and usage, creating style sheets, and more.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
, PN160 .C37 2010
Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective (Accessible Archives)
Full-text of major articles related to the Civil War from the New York Herald, Charleston Mercury, and Richmond Enquirer...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Compilation of Presidential Documents (US Government Printing Office)
Collection of daily and weekly compilations of Presidential documents, official publications released by the White House Press Secretary.
[more info]
Internet
Congressional Committee Prints (US Government Printing Office)
Access to catalog of Congressional Committee Prints, 2005 to present.
[more info]
Corsair: the online research resource of the Pierpont Morgan Library
[more info]
CQ Press Electronic Library (CQ Press)
Searches CQ Weekly, CQ Researcher, and CQ Historic Documents, all in one...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
CQ Press Historic Documents Online Library (CQ Press)
A full-text database of primary source documents. Each volume contains approximately one hundred documents highlighting the year's most important events and issues...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Cross-Cultural CD (SilverPlatter)
Contains full-text descriptions of life in 30 societies around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries...
[more info]
Reference Desk
David Rumsey Map Collection (Cartography Associates)
The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America maps and other cartographic materials. Images available for certain uses (such as attribution) under the
Creative Commons
license.
[more info]
Internet
Dictionary of Old English Corpus (University of Toronto)
A complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Dictionary of Old English: A to G (University of Toronto)
The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (600 - 1150 A.D.) of the English language...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Digital National Security Archive (Chadwyck-Healey)
This database is the most comprehensive collection available of significant primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945 ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Dolley Madison Papers (University of Virginia)
Search history through Dolley Madison's correspondence letters dated from 1788 - 1837...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Earls Colne, Essex - Records of an English Village, 1375-1854
Primary documents (church, state, estate, and personal) from one village in England over the course of four centuries.
[more info]
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 (Readex)
A collection of full-text digital books. Digital version of the Early American Imprints...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw Shoemaker: 1801-1819 (Readex)
A collection of 36,000 fully searchable digital books...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment (Alexander Street Press)
Primary source collection of personal accounts of traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Early English Books Online (Chadwyck-Healey)
Early English Books Online™, 1475-1700 (EEBO) provides digital access to more than 100,000 literary and historical classics....
[more info]
ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)
Provides digital editions of nearly all books published in Great Britain in the 18th century...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
eHRAF World Cultures: Collection of Ethnography (Yale University)
A cross-cultural database that contains over 350,000 pages of information on all aspects of cultural and social life. Check out these
online tutorials
for a quick introduction to eHRAF.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Empire Online (1492-1962) (Adam Matthew Digital)
Full text primary source documents, including original manuscripts and printed material...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
English Poetry Full-Text Database (Chadwyck-Healey)
Full-text of 1,350 English and British poems from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of 19th century ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
English Short Title Catalogue
Indexes over 460,000 that were published between 1473 and 1800 primarily in Britain and North America.
[more info]
English Verse Drama (Chadwyck-Healey)
Full-text of more than 1,500 works by 450 named and 230 anonymous authors ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Europa Film Treasures
A film initiative from the Treasures of European Archives project that provides free streaming films from Europe and the Americas.
[more info]
Europa World (Taylor and Francis)
Europa World provides the latest information covering political elections, country profiles, and industry statistics....
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Federal Regulations by Topic
U.S. Government web site that makes it easier for you to participate in Federal rulemaking.
[more info]
Internet
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 (Gale)
Contains FBI files on African Americans and others considered "politically suspect" from 1920 to 1984. People of interest to the FBI were members of protest groups, Socialists, Communists, militant labor unionists, and many more.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
FIAF - International Index to Film Periodicals (Chadwyck-Healey)
FIAF is a bibliographical index offering in-depth coverage of the world's foremost academic and popular film journals.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Gale NewsVault
Search or browse both the index of
19th Century British Newspapers
and the full text of
19th Century US Newspapers
and
Times Digital Archive
at once.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Global Missions and Theology (Gale)
Contains documents from and about missionary activity in the United States during the 19th Century. Includes reproductions of personal narratives, organizational records, and biographies of churches, church leaders, and missionaries. Also contains material on missionary activities in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Sandwich Islands.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
HarpWeek (Harper's Weekly, 1857-1912) (HarpWeek)
A full-text database of Harper's Weekly text and images from the 19th century (1857-1912) ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
In the First Person: Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories, and Other Personal Narratives (Alexander Street Press)
Search letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies within scholarly materials.
[more info]
Internet
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period (Alexander Street Press)
Includes more than 80 volumes of poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
JMU Library Catalog (LEO): Screenplay Search (JMU Libraries)
The library has a number of classic and popular film screenplays in the collection. Use this link to list most of them, or search for individual film titles using the catalog's title search.
[more info]
Internet
JSTOR
Full online text and images for back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, literature, etc.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Labyrinth
For Dr. Bankert's section of 299: Serves as a guide to online Medieval resources, including primary texts, secondary texts, and bibliographies.
[more info]
Latin American Travelogues
From Brown University's special collections, a digital collection of published travel accounts from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Languages represented include English, Spanish, and French.
[more info]
Latin American Women Writers (Alexander Street Press)
A collection of poetry, prose, essays, and drama written by women writers from Mexico, Central America, and South America.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Latino Literature (Alexander Street Press)
A collection of plays, prose, and poetry written Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Latino writers.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
LIFE Photo Archive
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.
[more info]
Internet
Making of America
Digital copies of primary sources published in the US from pre Civil War to the 1920s. Click 'More Info' for website links...
[more info]
Internet
MasterFILE Premier (EBSCO)
Includes information on general reference, business, health, general science, and multicultural issues. Contains full text magazine articles, periodicals, books, primary source documents, images, maps, and more.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Medieval Sourcesonline (Manchester University Press)
A collection of primary source material containing over three thousand pages of...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Middle English Dictionary (University of Michigan)
A comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available.
[more info]
Nation Digital Archive (EBSCO)
Index with full-text of
the Nation
magazine...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
National Museum of African Art
Provides online exhibits of traditional and modern African art. Also links to Radio Africa, which provides streaming audio from the Smithsonian’s Global Sound collection.
[more info]
New York Times: Historical (ProQuest)
Full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue to about 3 years ago...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)
NCCO contains monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more from the Nineteenth Century.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories (Alexander Street Press)
Collection of primary sources written by North American immigrants from 1800 to 1950 ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
North American Indian Drama (Alexander Street Press)
North American Indian Drama contains 172 plays by 33 playwrights written...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
North American Theatre Online (Alexander Street Press)
NATO provides detailed reference information for many theatrical figures, plays, theatres, major productions, and production companies, from Colonial times to the present...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
North American Women's Drama (Alexander Street Press)
North American Women's Drama contains 1,517 plays by 330 playwrights...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street Press)
Collection of letters and diaries reflecting on the immediate experiences of 1,017 women ...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
OAIster (OCLC / Firstsearch)
OAIster contains thousands of multidisciplinary resources from more than 1,000 contributors worldwide.
[more info]
Internet
Online Library of Liberty (Liberty Fund)
Electronic versions of classic books about individual liberty. These texts go back some 4,000 years...
[more info]
Internet
Opposing Viewpoints In Context (Gale)
Contains secondary and primary sources discussing today's social issues...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Oral History Online (Alexander Street Press)
This full-text material includes Ellis Island oral history narratives and rare Black Panther Party interviews...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Papers of George Washington Digital Edition
The Papers of George Washington: Diaries, Revolutionary War, Colonial, Confederation, Presidential, and Retirement from 1748-1799.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Papers of James Madison (University of Virginia)
The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition
includes documents from Madison's times as Congressman, Secretary of State, and President of the United States. Also includes papers from his retirement.
[more info]
Past Masters: Philosophy and Theology
Searchable full-text collections, in English and/or Latin, of the writings of philosophers and theologians from antiquity into the 20th century.
[more info]
Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1800 (Accessible Archives)
Contains the full-text of the most successful Colonial American newspaper...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Periodicals Archive Online (ProQuest)
Full text for journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Perseus Digital Library
Classical Greek, Roman, and English Renaissance texts, plays, architectural sources, photos, etc
[more info]
Internet
Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886
An electronic archive of eighty-two documents carrying fragmentary texts written by Dickinson between...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (EBSCO)
Indexes the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States from 1890 to 1982.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Repositories of Primary Sources
Provides links to over 5000 websites that contain manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources.
[more info]
Internet
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor and Francis)
Based on the scholarly printed Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "REP Online" allows users to search through a regularly updated universe of over...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 (Gale)
Full text of every book about the Americas published anywhere between 1500 and 1926...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Safari Business Library (ProQuest)
Safari Business Library addresses today's most important business issues and provides access to the latest IT information...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period (Alexander Street Press)
Full text of poetry from Scottish women, 1789 to 1832, from every social, economic, political and religious...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Smithsonian Global Sound (Alexander Street Press)
Interface change coming soon!
Click here
for more information.
The world's musical and aural traditions, in streaming audio...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
South & Southeast Asian Literature (Alexander Street Press)
A collection of fiction and poetry written in English by authors from South and Southeast Asia and their Diasporas...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Theatre in Video (Alexander Street Press)
Interface change coming soon!
Click here
for more information.
Theatre in Video contains more than 250 of the world’s most important plays...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Thomas A. Edison Papers
This digital collection contains over 100,000 primary documents produced by Thomas Edison. Includes correspondence, contracts, business records, diaries, laboratory records, patents, technical notes, and more.
[more info]
Internet
Times Digital Archive (Gale)
Search every word of every page of The London Times, and view PDF facsimiles of either a specific article or a...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Historical Archive (Gale)
Contains every page of the
Times Literary Supplement
published from 1902 - 2005.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Twentieth Century North American Drama (Alexander Street Press)
Twentieth Century North American Drama contains 1,530 plays by 223 playwrights...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
US Congressional Serial Set Digital Edition (Readex)
An incomparably rich collection of primary source material on all aspects of American history originating from Congress and other federal agencies...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
The latest version of RealPlayer required to view videos.
Click here
to download.
Streaming video of news from NBC (1968 to date) and CNN (1995 to date) plus indexing of television network news from all the major networks, 1968 to date.
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Victorian Women Writers Project
Provides transcripts of works written by 19th century British women writers. Includes anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.
[more info]
Virginia Memory
The digital collection of the Library of Virginia containing photographs, maps, government documents, etc, from the beginnings of Virginia history to the present.
[more info]
Internet
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Contains records of nearly 35,000 trans-Atlantic slaving voyages made between 1514 and 1866...
[more info]
Washington Post: Historical (ProQuest)
Full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue to about 15 years ago...
[more info]
Campus/Remote
Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Provides electronic access to over 2,800 volumes of 19th century American fiction. Works may be viewed as either rekeyed text or page images.
[more info]
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